Beauty and the Baron. Deborah Hale

you all right, Angela?” he asked. “Can I get anything for you?”

      If she’d been able to reply, she might have told him it did no good posing questions to someone who was coughing too hard to speak. All the same, the warm concern of his tone eased her enough that she was able to catch her breath again. Before long, she had her coughing under control.

      “Poor child!” The earl sounded flustered. “I hope you didn’t think I was implying any sinister motive to your betrothal. I only meant that I know you’ve both undertaken it to please me, in which you have heartily succeeded, I assure you.”

      Angela felt doubly foolish. She should have known the earl was not referring to his doctors’ grim predictions. Now her excessive reaction to his remark might rouse his suspicions.

      Fortunately, a lifetime of practice smoothing over her many blunders came to Angela’s rescue. “It had nothing to do with anything you said, my lord, truly. This was the first time I’d drunk champagne, that’s all. The bubbles tickled the back of my throat.”

      “First taste of champagne?” The earl shook his head at his grandson. “And Bulwick fancies himself a gentleman?”

      The hand with which Lord Daventry had been patting Angela’s back came to rest there for a moment, in what he might have meant as a comradely gesture of approval for her quick thinking.

      Her reaction to his innocent touch was anything but innocent. A dark, ravenous energy stirred within her and began to rove through her flesh. Her thoughts swarmed with longsup-pressed curiosity about the mysterious rites of lovers.

      To her vast relief, those immodest fancies did not blaze on her face for the gentlemen to see.

      “Sip slowly, my dear, if you are not used to it,” the earl advised her in a most solicitous tone before taking a drink himself.

      Lord Daventry left Angela’s side to refill her glass. His brief touch had made her hunger for more. When he returned with her champagne she made a deliberate effort to brush her fingers against his when he handed the flute to her.

      Was it possible he felt something of the strange force he had excited in her? she wondered as he lifted his gaze to hers and held it for a taut, expectant instant.

      The earl’s voice broke in on their fleeting private moment. “Perhaps I should be ashamed of myself for meddling in your lives.” He regarded Angela and his grandson with transparent satisfaction. “But I’m not. This modern notion of love matches is folly if you ask me. Let a young man choose his own mistress, I say, but let him be guided by his elders in the choice of a wife.”

      “You needn’t preach to me, Grandfather. I quite agree.” As Lord Daventry retreated to the mantel with his own champagne, he tossed the remark off in such a casual tone that Angela decided she must have imagined the potent flicker of awareness between them.

      Hoping to quench her own futile preoccupation with his lordship, Angela savored a deep draft of her wine, and then another.

      “Wise boy,” the earl commended his grandson. “It occurs to me that if I must postpone the happy occupation of planning a wedding, we might at least celebrate your betrothal properly.”

      “Forgive me.” Lord Daventry lifted his glass, from which he’d scarcely taken a drink. “I thought that’s what we’re doing.”

      Either the earl did not hear, or he chose to ignore his grandson’s comment.

      “A ball!” he cried, then immediately toasted his idea with another drink. “I’ve become an awful old recluse these past few years, turning down invitations and never going out anywhere. It’s time I rectified that by hosting a gathering.”

      A ball? For her? Under ordinary circumstances the prospect would have filled Angela with alarm. At the moment it sounded a perfectly jolly idea. She suspected that might be due to the glass of champagne she’d emptied so quickly, but she didn’t care.

      A ball. The very word conjured up visions from fairy stories, for Angela had no firsthand experience to counter them.

      Invitations to her cousins, Clemence and Camilla, had never included her. Aunt Hester thought the local Assembly Hall quite beneath the notice of her household, so Angela had never been allowed to go there. Uncle sometimes hosted house parties at which there might be a little dancing. But they were nothing compared to a real ball at a great house like Helmhurst.

      With herself as the guest of honor.

      “A ball?” Lord Daventry’s voice slashed through her soap bubble and rainbow daydreams. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Grandfather?”

      That miserable man! Angela’s lower lip thrust out. He wouldn’t let her have any fun at all out of this engagement, would he?

      Before the earl could reply, Angela took up her cudgels on his behalf. “Where are your manners, Lucius Daventry? That’s no way to speak to your grandfather. And what’s wrong with a ball, if I may ask? You make it sound like some sort of debauchery.”

      She had just enough discretion left to keep from calling him Lord Lucifer to his face, or suggesting that a night of debauchery might accord well with his wicked reputation.

      What if Tibby was right about Lord Lucifer after all? Angela wondered as she met his baleful glare. What if he did put curses on people?

      Good Lord! Lucius cursed under his breath. A single glass of champagne and the silly chit was foxed.

      He could barely refrain from groaning, especially when his grandfather appeared to endorse the young lady’s tipsy talk.

      “Angela’s quite right, my boy.” The earl lobbed his words back at Lucius. “In the first place, I taught you better manners than that, and in the second, I believe this engagement of yours is the perfect excuse for a little festivity.”

      All his old friends…and enemies strutting about his quiet sanctuary, staring at his masked face, whispering to one another about what had happened to him. Poor Daventry. Such a shame. And he used to be so handsome—the toast of the ton.

      Why didn’t the old man just order one of his limbs amputated for amusement? Lucius wondered. Perhaps his helpful fiancée could wield the surgeon’s saw, damn her!

      Angela rose from her chair and walked toward Lucius with a weaving gait that looked graceful but precarious.

      “If a ball to celebrate our engagement will amuse your grandfather, isn’t that reason enough for us to agree?” Her large liquid eyes and lopsided smile beseeched him in a manner he found difficult to resist. “After all, wasn’t that the whole point of—?”

      He had to silence the fuddled little fool before she blurted out everything. Perhaps because he’d thought more about kissing in the past several hours than he had in the previous three years, Lucius seized on the one means to quiet his fiancée that would least arouse his grandfather’s suspicions.

      Catching Angela’s hand, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her as if he meant it. That would teach the little goose to mind her tongue!

      He had not forgotten how to kiss a woman, Lucius was gratified to discover, as he claimed Angela’s delectable lips. What he had forgotten, or tried to forget, was how it felt to kiss a woman.

      Unless this one was somehow different from all the others.

      The aftertaste of champagne he imbibed from her had the most delicate bouquet, with heightened sweetness and sparkle. His head began to spin as though he’d guzzled an entire bottle. He finally parted from her as reluctantly as a drunkard from his favorite bottle.

      His kiss had the effect he’d hoped in temporarily robbing Angela of speech. Lucius had not anticipated that it might have a similar effect upon him.

      Meanwhile, the earl continued to sit with his back to them, sipping his champagne and turning a deaf ear to whatever minor liberties the newly betrothed couple might